Gail Collins and
Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are opinion columnists. They converse every week.
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Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times
“Bret Stephens: Gail, given what’s happened in the past two weeks, Martin Luther King Jr. Day feels particularly meaningful this year. It seems as if the country is just holding its breath, waiting for the next Capitol Hill mob to descend, somewhere, somehow, on something or someone.
Is this 1968 all over again, or do you feel any sense of optimism?
Gail: Well Bret, I was actually around in 1968 — politically speaking.
Bret: Ah, but do you actually remember it?
Gail: There were certainly a lot of … distractions, what with a cultural revolution around every corner. And a terrible string of assassinations — after King, I can remember when Robert Kennedy was killed in June, feeling like nobody was safe from crazy people and right-wing racists.
Bret: Now it’s like déjà vu all over again. Donald Trump spent five years stoking the paranoia and loathing of his crowds, and now it has been unleashed. We’ll be living with it for years.”
